“TRICK OR TREAT?”
Today we are in a battle of spiritual worlds. The realm of the spirit is a very real world. The Spirit world is more real than the natural world. The Natural world is preparing for a WAR. The Spiritual World is preparing for a WEDDING OF THE AGES.
Many view life as the spinning of a ROULETTE WHEEL. Maybe today will be a good day? Maybe it will a bad day. I am here to share with you that the DEVIL IS OUT TO TRICK PEOPLE, BUT GOD WANTS TO TREAT YOU.
Text: I Timothy 4:1; Psalm 1:1-3
The Spiritual Battle is real. We are in the fight for our lives today.
The most significant arena of the battle is in THE SOULISH realm.
(Personality, emotions, imagination, thoughts, and mindset)
Our spirit is our conscious, and it is in the spiritual realm where we fight.
Our Physical body, our senses, the world is the physical foe.
- THE DEVIL LOVES TO TRICK PEOPLE. I Timothy 4:1
Paul and John both describe satan as the evil one. Jesus prayed that the Father would protect His followers from the evil one. John tells us that the whole world is under the control of satan. Just as God is the embodiment of all that is good.
Satan is the embodiment of all that is evil. Satan’s essential nature is evil. Without a doubt, satan’s very nature and basic elements are unholy, & despicable. SATAN is ingrained with harmful motives & loves to TRICK PEOPLE.
John 10:10; John 8:44; II Corinthians 4:3-4; Colossians 1:13; I Peter 5:8; Ephesians 6:12
We live in a day when people call good evil and evil good. Satan’s nature is to deceive, manipulate, lie and twist the truth. Satan loves to confuse people about who God is, what God wants to do.
He loves to deceive people away from the truth. He loves to mess with people’s minds. In these last days, He is bringing people into confusion.
“In the last days-False messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones.
A. THE TRICKSTER WILL ATTEMPT TO CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS.
America is being controlled by a master deceiver.
ILLUS.: A TRICKSTER’S job is to make the characters move the way he wants.
It looks real, but it is not. He loves to pull your heart in the wrong direction. He is a master at making you think things that are false as though they were true. Satan’s goal is to control you and cause you to make decisions that you never dreamed you would ever make.
He will tempt you farther than you want to go, make you stay longer than you want to stay, and make you pay more than you want to pay.
ILLUS.: All major cities have all passed the murders committed for all last year.
Our cities are rife with corruption. They are places of hopelessness. There is not enough money to give people happiness. Proverbs 14:12
The TRICKSTER promises the good life. He promises the good times. He promises that it won’t hurt anyone else. He promises that it will be all right.
LIE: “After all everyone is doing it.” I John 2:15
You cannot love God, and the world at the same time. It takes a full commitment to love the Father with all your heart. The TRICKSTER will do his bidding to pull your heartstrings.
He just pulls you a little at a time. Before long, it seems normal. Your heart is no longer being guided by God. It is being guided by the TRICKSTER. He is actually causing you to walk away from what God wants.
Satan will take everyone to the Mount of Temptation. He lied to Jesus. If he lied to Jesus, then he will lie to you. The DEVIL told Eve the ultimate lie, “You shall be like God.”
(He is trying to hide something. He is trying to keep things from you.)
- God is not trying to hide anything good from you. He is trying to show you His goodness. We serve an awesome God, who loves you and wants you to know Him, and His incredible love.
- Today sin is interpreted as an expression. Everything is permissible or so they say. We live in a world that wants to explain everything away.
The spirit of the Anti-Christ has been released, and it is taking over.
Mankind doesn’t understand…….Washington doesn’t understand….
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that satisfies. John. 10:10
HERE IS HOW SATAN CRAFTS A WEB OF DECEPTION:
“AS SOON AS YOU GET UP FROM YOUR KNEES PRAYING, SATAN PULLS AGAINST YOU, AND HE TRIES TO DISCOURAGE YOU.”
He will attempt to come against your heart.
B. THE TRICKSTER WILL TEMPT YOU WITH A HARD HEART.
If you want to go to heaven, you have to get over a hard heart. You can’t let everybody, and anybody get into your crawl. That will cause you to lose your walk with God.
The TRICKSTER will cause you to watch people. He will say: “Look at them, they are not real Christians.” Why everybody is a hypocrite. Nobody is really serving God anymore. Look at what they did. Stop looking at other people.
The TRICKSTER LIED TO ELIJAH, and Elijah was so convinced that He said: “I’m the only one who is sincere.” Yet God had already told him that 7000 prophets had not bowed down and denied the truth.
POINT: You can hear the gospel with your head, rather than your heart. This will cause you to become familiar with its truths. Satan will put people in your pathway to keep you from what God has for you. He will cause things to harden our hearts. Today people are being worn out in life. You can’t fight it by yourself.
You can’t win by yourself. God will come and show you His love, His mercy, and His grace. The problem is some people have played with the deceiver so long that they can’t even bring themselves to accept Christ.
Matthew 13:15
God wants to heal you, God wants to change you, God wants to move in your heart, but there are too many deceptions connected to your heart.
THE WITNESSES:
- The Bible says in Romans that all of mankind has the witness of Creation. God created the earth in 6 literal days.
- The Bible also says that we have the witness of the cross. Time is marked by BC, AD. No other man has ever affected time as Jesus, the son of almighty God.
- The Bible says there is a witness in our hearts. People have a conscience. It is called the Holy Spirit. You have to learn to lie to yourself in order to reject Christ.
People still decide whether to accept the gospel or reject it. God is patient with us. He is long-suffering.
POINT: There comes a time when the gospel must be responded to. After a period of time, when God reveals Himself to you. The gospel elicits a response. If after a while there is no response. Then hardness of heart can begin to set in.
Here is where people begin to take God for granted. They assume that God will understand, that God will always be there for them. That is a half-truth. A truth mixed with partial truth is a lie. God understands human nature, but God doesn’t understand us so much that He will ignore our issues. Sin will cost you His presence.
When you are not in His presence. You lose sensitivity to God. Divisions in the family come. The confusion begins to plague your mind…if there is no repentance then…your faith begins to die. When you get past having a hardened heart, Satan will put another attraction in your way.
C. THE TRICKSTER WILL ACCUSE YOU.
*Satan is what the Bible calls: “The accuser of the Brethren. He is deceitful. He will do and say anything, to get your mind off God. Satan accuses you, discourages you. He is the god of this age. If you are going to live victoriously, you are going to have to get through the accusations of satan.
I Peter 5:8-10
The Bible says that we overcome him with the word of our testimony. If you don’t have a testimony, then you will not overcome Him. You will find yourself cast down and knocked out of the fight. Satan will come and speak in your ear.
TRICKSTER: You might as well quit serving God.
- You are not a real Christian.
- You don’t need to go to Church all the time.
- You don’t understand the Bible, so why read it anyway?
- One of the greatest deceptions is the one called WHY?
- Why does the wicked prosper and have so much money?
- God, why did you let this happen?’
Trust and believe in God. Isaiah 65:24
Satan will use anything to get you to stop serving God.
ILLUS.: I don’t need God -I have my substance abuse.
I don’t care if the whole world makes pot legal. God doesn’t want you to have addictions in your lives.
II. GOD WANTS TO TREAT YOU! Psalm 1:1-3
There are many people walking around who do not understand who they are in the Lord.
-I’ve discovered that Jesus is a wonderful counselor, He desires to set the captives free! He desires to bind up the brokenhearted!
When we realize that, we can submit to God, resist the devil and he will free. Romans 8:16
When we become born-again, we are made alive in Christ.
In these last days, it is crucial that we learn how to take captive every thought and bring it into the obedience of Christ.
Power is available as we learn to walk in it, talk in it, believe in it, and progress in it.
POINT: Many do not understand their Spiritual Heritage, and therefore they never become who Christ desired for them to be. We are to grow up in all aspects unto Christ – to a mature person.
Q-If God has given us everything we need to mature in Christ, then why aren’t more Christians growing in Christ?
*We should be saying of our Christian faith, and now I love God and others more this year than I did last year! If we can’t say that, then we are not growing!
IMPORTANT POINTS:
- Prior to the cross satan was not a defeated foe, and believers were not seated with Christ in the heavenlies. (It was all about works)
- Jesus’ death and resurrection triumphed over and disarmed the rulers and authorities of the kingdom of darkness. Colossians 2:15
Once you are alive in Christ, then YOU are seated with Him in the heavenlies, and no longer need an outside agent to affect authority for you. You reside in Christ, who has all authority.
The foundational issues of our identity in Christ teach us how to live by faith, walk in the Spirit, renew our mind, manage our emotions, resolve emotional traumas of our past through faith and forgiveness.
Ephesians 1:18-21
POINT: There is no need for the Christian to defeat the devil.
Jesus has already done that! We just need to believe it! It is our individual responsibility as a believer to repent and believe the truth that will set us free.
A. YOUR FOCUS DETERMINES HOW YOU THINK GOD TREATS YOU.
The western world has experienced a massive paradigm shift in its worldview over the last 2 decades. It is being seen in the New age Philosophies and beliefs that are welding Judeo Christian beliefs and secular mindsets into secularized science of religion. These beliefs are making inroads into businesses, education, and religious institutions across our country.
ILLUS.: What we think about, often becomes our value system. What we meditate on, becomes our focus, our focus becomes our value system, our value system causes us to talk about these things, thus we believe what we focus on.
This is why we are told in scripture to think about things that are God’s will. We should be thinking about things of the Spirit. Philippians 4:7
- Understanding the Western World view.
The Western Mindset believes in a 2-tier system of beliefs. One is a system of religion that explains God. The other is a science that fills in the blanks. The western mindset uses rationalism and naturalism to explain reality. Americans will talk about God, and prayer, but it is more in transcendent terms not in the understanding that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that He has defeated the enemy of our souls.
- Many Christians have excluded the supernatural from their worldview.
Scripture teaches that supernatural, spiritual forces are at work in this world. When we exclude the supernatural from our belief system, we exclude God’s power from our theology and practice.
-I am convinced that some Christians battle physical symptoms unsuccessfully through natural means when the essence of the problem is spiritual.
-Where there is bitterness, guilt, shame, unforgiveness, there are many other problems that are manifested physically. (Auto-Immune diseases have skyrocketed in recent years)
-In the Western Mindset, we are conditioned to look for every problem in the natural first, and if that doesn’t work we say: “Well, I guess we should pray.” Matt. 6:33
The first thing a Christian should do about anything is to pray.
We live in the natural world, but we are involved in a spiritual war.
Many attempts to meet their spiritual need apart from God.
- We must confront our worldview and give ourselves the perspective of the cross.
Adam and Eve were the first mortals who believed that they could be like God. Satan believed that same lie before he was tossed out of Heaven.
Countless others now believe that they are their own gods, and the New Age movement promotes a messed-up view that we are like god.
-People quote Dr. Phil, Joe Biden, and Faucci more than the Bible, and we wonder why we don’t grasp faith.
–The Biblical account of creation teaches that only the Creator is God.
-We have created beings and we cannot exist apart from God.
-We became living beings when God breathed into us the breath of life.
We must learn to deny our beliefs to take up His beliefs.
-Denying yourself is different than self-denial.
To deny ourselves is to deny self-rule. Self-Denial is the primary battle of life.
The flesh scrambles for the throne and struggles to be God. Matthew 6:24
-To pick up the cross daily means to acknowledge every day that we belong to God.
Not our cross, but the cross of Christ.
B. YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF GOD’S BLESSINGS DETERMINE YOUR FREEDOM.
Heritage means everything. Understanding that it is your privilege, your right, your blessing to be free in Christ is key to FREEDOM.
- We are a child of God. That understanding makes darkness flee. It makes doubts leave. It makes suspicions flee.
Nothing is more foundational than understanding and affirming what God has done for you in Christ, and who you are as His child. Romans 8:16-17
- Know who you are in Christ Jesus.
It’s important to accept what God says about who we are. All too often we live with feelings of deep inadequacy. We may regret the past or fear the future.
A wise Christian grows in understanding OF WHO THEY ARE in Christ. A person who knows how God sees confidence in their identity. They know God made them just the way they are. We don’t compare ourselves with others, but we compare ourselves with Christ. We must make every effort to grow in the knowledge of the truth of what God says about us. God says, “We are beautifully and wonderfully made.”
–We are not a product of our past, but rather a new creation in Christ Jesus.
A Christian who understands who they are in God’s sight knows they are:
* Accepted (Ephesians 1:5) by God.
* Secure (Philippians 1:6) in Christ.
* Significant (John 15:16) in God’s plan
Our identity is not bound up in what we have, what we look like, or what we wear. Our identity is secure in who we are as a beloved child of God. Ephesians 2:10
-Jesus meets our need for identity, life, acceptance, security & significance.
- We are spiritually and eternally alive. Ephesians 2:1
Because of Adam’s sin, every person who comes into this world is born physically alive but spiritually dead.
-When we became born again, our spirit/soul is united with God, and we become spiritually united with Christ no longer in Adam.
- We are a New Creation in Christ.
When we don’t know who we are in Christ, we believe that we are just another person rather than a child of the living God. We must understand that God has a grand plan for our life!
Life in the Spirit = No condemnation!
Living in the Spirit is freedom, life, and fulfillment.
Ephesians 5:8; II Corinthians 5:17
- We can be victorious over sin and death. Romans 8:1-2–
We are no longer in the flesh as our old self was, we are now in Christ Jesus.
We live a new life and have a new attitude. What gives me a new attitude is Christ working in me.
- We can be free from the power of sin.
The law is incapable of setting us free. Rom. 7:15-25
CONCLUSION: THE ULTIMATE TREAT- THE BATTLE HAS BEEN WON.
When we became Christian, no one pushed the delete button in our memory bank. There are memories that harass many Christians. Learned behaviors from our past become the flesh in our present.
This is why we must learn how to renew our minds and imagination in Christ.
Colossians 1:13-14; Colossians 3:3
If these things are true, how come I struggle with the same thoughts and feelings. I did before I became a Christian? There is a very logical reason. During the early and formative years of our life, many did not have the presence of God nor the knowledge of God’s ways. Many people learned to live their lives independent of God. *This learned independence is what we call FLESH.
Everything we learned before Christ is recorded is still recorded in our memory.
Romans 12:1,2
- Strongholds of Self-Defense.
There are many ways people have learned to cope with life, which is not always mentally and emotionally healthy. For instance, many people have learned to lie in order to protect themselves.
OPENNESS SETS US FREE!
There are many common defense mechanisms we use to protect ourselves.
DENIAL-refusal to face the truth
FANTASY-escape from the real world
EMOTIONAL INSULATION-withdrawing to avoid rejection
REGRESSION-reverting to less threatening times
DISPLACEMENT-Taking frustration out on others
PROJECTION-Blaming others
RATIONALIZATION-Making excuses for poor behavior
None of these are healthy-In Him do I live and make my being! II Corinthians 10:3-5
These defense mechanisms become strongholds.
- What we have learned must be unlearned to serve Christ.
If we have been trained wrong, we can be retrained through Christ.
If we believed a lie, we can renounce the lie, and believe the truth of God’s word.
HOW? By the renewing of our minds- We are new creations in Christ, we still battle the world, the flesh, and the devil.
- Satan’s Schemes.
Satan knows that if he can control our thoughts then he will control our life. II Corinthians 10:5
Unforgiveness is a scheme of satan. We are to forgive so satan does not take advantage of us. I firmly believe that unforgiveness is the major reason that people remain in bondage to the past.
-FORGIVE IT-QUIT IT-GET OVER IT.
- Satan is capable of putting thoughts into our minds.
Satan put deception into the heart of Judas. John 13:2. Satan put deception into Ananias & Saphira’s heart to lie to the HG- Acts 5:3. Satan even told Jesus that he would give Him the kingdoms of the world.
There is a difference between our brain and our mind. When you get things in your spirit – then your brain will be retrained. Taking every thought captive! – Phil. 4:7
I am a child of God, I will not think like that!